Hopi

The Hopi are a Pueblo people of north-eastern Arizona, living in a cluster of villages on and below three mesas, some of them among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the United States. They speak a Uto-Aztecan language, govern themselves as the federally recognised Hopi Tribe from Kykotsmovi, and in the 2010 census about 19,338 people identified as Hopi. Their own name carries the sense of a well-behaved, peaceable person who follows the Hopi Way.

The Hopi are thought to descend from the Ancestral Puebloans, whom they call Hisatsinom, builders of the great multi-storey settlements of the Four Corners. Old Oraibi was founded before 1100 and, according to Spanish records, had 1,500 to 3,000 inhabitants in the 1540s. Villages first stood at the foot of the mesas; during the seventeenth century many moved to the mesa tops for protection against Ute, Apache and Spanish raiders. Houses shared features with other Pueblo towns, including kivas, underground chambers for religious ceremonies.

Hopi society is organised in matrilineal clans that cross village lines; children belong to the mother's clan, while the women of the father's clan gather on the twentieth day after birth to give the baby names, sometimes dozens. Farming in a dry land is at the heart of Hopi life and belief, and the people see themselves as caretakers of land inherited from their ancestors. A cycle of ceremonies, timed by the lunar calendar, includes the katsina rites, of which the Snake Dance became the best known to outsiders; in the present Fourth World, the Hopi honour Maasaw, the caretaker of the earth.

Coronado's expedition reached the Hopi in 1540, sending Pedro de Tovar to the village of Awatovi, and in 1582–83 Antonio de Espejo counted five villages and around 12,000 people. Franciscan missionaries arrived in 1629 and built a church at Awatovi, but won few converts and punished traditional worship, while the authorities of New Spain demanded labour and goods. The Hopi joined the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, killing the missionaries and dismantling the churches. When friars began rebuilding at Awatovi, men from other Hopi villages destroyed the village in the winter of 1700–01, and Spain never re-established a presence among the Hopi.

In 1850 Hopi leaders travelled to Santa Fe to seek American protection against Navajo raids. An executive order in 1882 created a Hopi reservation, a rectangle inside the much larger Navajo lands. From 1887 a boarding school at Keams Canyon forced children to give up their names, dress and language; parents at Oraibi resisted, and 19 Hopi men were imprisoned at Alcatraz in 1895 for refusing to send their children. The dispute split Oraibi in 1906, when the conservative faction left to found Hotevilla.

The Hopi adopted a constitution in 1936, creating a Tribal Council while keeping the traditional authority of the villages, some of which still choose not to send representatives. Long disputes with the Navajo over shared land led to the Navajo–Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974 and further legislation in 1996, which forced relocations on both sides and remain controversial. Coal royalties long funded the tribe, and the closure of a large mine in 2019 hit employment hard. The Hopi have repeatedly voted against casinos. Many Hopi earn a living from katsina carving, pottery and silver jewellery.

Our 1500 map draws an approximate Hopi territory around the mesas of north-eastern Arizona; the outline is a rough indication of a much smaller village homeland. Neighbours on the same map include the Navajo and the Apache.